What Is Ethnic Cleansing?
As humanity’s understanding and discussion of the concepts of race, racism, and antiracism have evolved over generations, so have the words and phrases we use as we continue the work of obeying God and advancing racial justice.
In this “What Is?” series, the General Commission on Religion and Race offers this compilation of concise definitions, examples, and Biblical/theological foundations to create common vocabulary for Christians as we engage in anti-racism work.
Our hope, as you engage this series, is that the learning equips you to move into deeper waters in anti-racism work in your respective context.
Visit the series homepage for more information on other anti-racism resources.
Definition:
Ethnic cleansing is the deliberate and systematic removal of an ethnic, racial, or religious group from a specific territory, with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. This can occur through direct violence, such as forced displacement, persecution, or mass killing, or through policies that erase a people’s identity, culture, or presence. The European Roma Rights Centre defines ethnic cleansing as not only physical expulsion but also the creation of an environment so hostile that people cannot remain.
Example(s) of The Doctrine of Discovery:
For Roma people in Europe, ethnic cleansing has not only been a historical reality but also a modern threat. During World War II, over 500,000 Roma were murdered in the Porrajmos (the Roma Holocaust) which was formally recognized by the European Parliament only in 2015. After 1989, ethnic violence across Europe again targeted Roma communities—through expulsions, destruction of settlements, and racialized violence.
Today, ethnic cleansing takes more subtle forms. Systemic exclusion, segregated schooling, and forced evictions—documented by ERRC—continue to displace Roma families from cities and opportunities. In modern professional and church contexts, ethnic cleansing can manifest as institutional erasure: when Roma names are quietly removed from lists, invitations, or leadership spaces; when Roma voices are silenced in training and decision-making processes; or when our cultural identity is deemed inconvenient or “too political.”
We can say that the new ethnic cleansing is bureaucratic: paper walls that decide who belongs, whose voice counts, and who is quietly uninvited.
Biblical/Spiritual/Theological Framing or References:
Throughout Scripture, God’s story is one of hearing the cries of the oppressed and restoring those who have been cast out or made invisible. From the opening chapters of Genesis, humanity is created imago Dei, in the image of God, bearing inherent dignity that cannot be stripped away by empire, ethnicity, or circumstance. When that image is defaced by systems of domination or exclusion, God moves toward the wounded, not away.
In Exodus, God hears the groans of an enslaved people and intervenes, leading them from bondage to freedom, a divine protest against every Pharaoh that seeks to erase a people’s identity. The Prophets continue this witness, condemning those who “devour the vineyard” and “turn aside the poor at the gate” (Isaiah 3:14, Amos 5:12), reminding us that true worship is inseparable from justice and neighbor-love. The Psalms give voice to those displaced, crying, “How long, O Lord?” and yet holding fast to the promise that God dwells with the brokenhearted.
In Christ, this divine movement of solidarity reaches its fullness. Jesus enters human suffering, identifying himself with the marginalized and exiled, the leper, the foreign woman, the child, the prisoner. The incarnation itself is a divine act of accompaniment, God with us, not above us. To follow Christ, then, is to stand where people are being erased, and to proclaim with our presence, “You belong, your story matters.” Ethnic cleansing, by contrast, is a desecration of the imago Dei, a theological violence that denies God’s image in others. Christian witness must therefore be the practice of restoring that image through truth-telling, solidarity, and acts of repair.
As a Lutheran pastor, reflecting on ethnic cleansing carries a particular weight. The Lutheran tradition bears the painful truth that some of our own theological ancestors in Germany stood silent, or even complicit, while the Nazi regime pursued the extermination of Jews, Roma, and others deemed “undesirable.” Yet amid that failure, the prophetic witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer shines as a counter-testimony. Though many Lutherans of his time distrusted or dismissed him, Bonhoeffer insisted that “the Church is only the Church when it exists for others.” His conviction that faith must take bodily form, standing with those who suffer, speaking where silence would mean betrayal, exposes the moral stakes of theology itself.
For those of us who bear both the Lutheran name and the memory of Roma kin lost in the Porrajmos, Bonhoeffer’s theology becomes a call to repentance and courage. We are summoned to be a Church that does not spiritualize away injustice, but one that remembers, protests, and accompanies, a Church that risks comfort to defend the sacred image of God in every people. To confess Christ today is to resist every attempt to erase God’s beloved creation, to say with our lives, Never again, not in our name, and not in God’s.
Reflection Questions:
How do systems—political, social, or religious—participate in erasing entire peoples without visible violence?
Where might my community be complicit in the silencing or displacement of others?
How can our faith communities become spaces of remembrance and resistance against cultural erasure?
For Further Information
European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC): https://www.errc.org
Film: A People Uncounted (2011) – Documentary on Roma history, identity, and the enduring impact of discrimination.
Marinov, Aleksandar G. (2019). Inward Looking: The Impact of Migration on Romanipe from the Romani Perspective. New Directions in Romani Studies, vol. 2. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
References
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Touchstone, 1997.
European Roma Rights Centre. (2005). In the Aftermath of Ethnic Cleansing: Continued Persecution of Roma, Ashkalis, Egyptians and Others Perceived as “Gypsies” in Kosovo. Roma Rights Journal.
Marinov, Aleksandar G. Inward Looking: The Impact of Migration on Romanipe from the Romani Perspective. New Directions in Romani Studies, vol. 2. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019.
European Parliament: “Roma: What Discrimination Do They Face and What Does the EU Do?”